Ruby & Jasper
Jules wasn’t calming down as easily as Jasper had hoped. She’d been jealous at him before about hypothetical girls in his life, and a bit about him and Sabrina Cox being friends, but he’d never seen her this pissed. She was too drunk to talk any sense into either, and after some heated back and forth, she stomped off to her room for a while and slammed the door behind her. Jasper was Over It for the moment, so he stalked back downstairs to the party. He grabbed a stronger drink from the kitchen and then went outside to smoke ... only to remember that Ruby had snagged his whole pack of cigarettes. Muttering curses under his breath about women in general, he set off to find her, hoping she hadn’t left with all his smokes. He could bum some, of course, but people would leave eventually.
Ruby’s temper had started to cool as soon as she stepped outside, but she knew better than to go back in any time soon. The whole exchange pissed her off, from Jules’ insane suggestion that Jasper would hurt her to the way she’d stepped between them. What the fuck did she think Ruby was going to do? Jump him? She tried to reason it all out in her head, but had had just enough to drink that reason was failing. Instead she found people to distract her for a bit, figuring that was better than nothing, and was just at the point where she needed to make a decision about staying or going when she saw Jasper step outside. Excusing herself from the conversation, Ruby walked over to him, offering his cigarettes back. “How bad is it?”
The pink hair and the dress she was wearing were pretty easy to spot, so Jasper saw Ruby’s approach with some dull gratitude. He accepted his pack from her and immediately shook one loose and moved to light it up. “Not great, she’s pretty pissed,” he answered, the cigarette bobbing between his lips. He took a deep drag and tilted his head back to exhale it upward into the night sky, then looked at Ruby again. “You okay?” Ruby seemed much more sober than Jules at the moment, so maybe she could be more reasonable. He still didn’t really understand what had happened.
Ruby shrugged, more annoyed than anything else at that point. She’d come to the party hoping to have fun. This was pretty much the opposite. And it put her in a space with Jules that was more adversarial than she liked to deal with on a daily basis, but she wasn’t willing to take back a single thing she’d said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were dating Jules?” She knew it wasn’t her business, but if they’d been together since June… The burn was still there, the idea that he didn’t trust her, or that they weren’t good friends, or whatever it was that Jules had been trying to say by throwing that in her face.
Why didn’t he tell Ruby this, why didn’t he tell Jules that, Jesus Christ. Jasper hadn’t been aware that he apparently had to disclose everything to every female in his life up front. He gave her a disgruntled look and made a vague gesture with his hand, cigarette tucked between his knuckles. “Because we’re not dating,” he said, trying not to sound exasperated and mostly failing. “Or we weren’t until like ... now. I dunno what the fuck we’re doing, honestly. We fucked through the summer, it was all just for fun, now it’s turning into something else, I dunno.” He took a drag from his smoke and moved to run his free hand through his hair. Which was of course pulled back like it wasn’t usually. Grumbling a little, Jasper pulled the elastic out of it to let the ponytail down and fluff-scratched in his hair. Those things always gave him a headache after a while. Not that everything else wasn’t already doing that.